Researchers at Bristol uni say they have performed experiments indicating that if British troops were to use the "dazzle camouflage" favoured for warships in the World Wars on their vehicles in Afghanistan, this would make them harder to hit with RPG anti-armour rockets, a favourite Taliban weapon.
Dr Nick Scott-Samuel, …

They should just

Dazzle camo warships

I might be wrong, but I thought that the reason warships were painted with dazzle patterns was to disrupt the Uboat captains ability to detect it's bearing, by making it difficult to tell apart the bow and stern and their relative angles toward or away from him?

Agreed though, that ground vehicles would likely be too slow, and critically, would be likely following a known bearing, that of the road/track they are running on.

As a former naval ossifer

you should know better, Lewis:

<The idea behind dazzle-cam is not to avoid being seen, but to make oneself harder to hit once one has been seen. It was originally meant to prevent German submarines getting an accurate idea of a warship's range, speed and heading, so causing difficulties in getting a hit with a visually aimed dumb torpedo.

From this study it becomes apparent that it never worked in the matter of causing a speed-estimation error, as warships don't go fast enough for the effect to kick in.>

It did work, quite well, in the middle of a large expanse of water with no other reference points, especially when viewed through a water streaked periscope lens 2 foot above the water line.

@Sgt_V3n0m: wot no Dazzle?

The Force is not strong in this one...

As a massive WWII buff, you haven't been looking very hard; many ships were covered in dazzle camoflage, from a few simple stripes to break up the Bismarck and Tirpitz (which may have been painted in and out depending on service conditions) to complex patterns on US and other vessels

ah

Well I mainly know about the Ostfront and the Western Front, not that much about the Battle of the Pacific and to a lesser extent, the Battle for the Atlantic. But it was such a massive war, and in some cases, a new kind of war (ME-262, anyone? And what about the Vampir, and the SdKfz 251/1 that supported Panther tanks that was equipped night vision devices?) that you'll learn something every time you talk about it.

Not just range and bearing.

The idea was also to alter the silhouette, making the ship itself harder to identify. Probably the most successful case of this was the Bismark, which had dark areas painted to her bow and stern as well as over her superstructure. This made her look shorter from a distance. When the Bismark was breaking out into the Atlantic, she was steaming with the smaller heavy-cruiser Prinz Eugen ahead of her, when the unfortunate HMS Hood chased her down. Hood's crew opened fire on the Prinz first, being tricked into thinking the Prinz was the Bismark, no doubt partly due to Bismark's camo.

I'm not sure there is much value to camo in the Afghan conflict - the vehicles are largely stuck on known tracks/roads, and will usually be accompanied by a large dust cloud when moving at any speed. Probably a far better idea to fit stronger spaced armour, or just use drone vehicles to head up a column and take the brunt of an ambush.

RE: Hey Matt,

@matt bryant

Sadly not true, by the time Bismarck was making her break for the open ocean the dazzle camo and false bow-wave had been painted over. The confusion came because Prinz Eugen and Bismark were visually very similar silhouettes, and sailing in such a way that they looked the same size from certain angles.

Absolutely.

It was also meant to knacker the coincidence range finding gear warships carried at the time, who's use involved lining up two halves of an image.

The idea was that the dazzle patterns would cause the operator would line up on the fake edges of the camo (or think that a misalignment was just part of the dazzle) and get the range completely wrong.

And easily trumped...

Not quite the whole story...

At sea there was an advantage to it if you had a number of ships travelling in a flotilla, such as a capital ship and escorts.

A mass of ships, at different ranges to the submarine, would find it much more difficult to identify the ship by its outline (similar to how a herd of zebras get protection by making it hard to identify individuals)

Submarines used to have to identify the height-at-the-mast, by the elevation from the horizon, and knowing the ship type and class, to triangulate the range. Only then could speed be correctly identified, and a torpedo vector created.

A ship on its own would see little benefit from this sort of camoflage, but it did offer some protection in numbers as outines of the ships become confused, and frankly, looked pretty damn cool.

So probably totally useless for trucks and cars and aggressors with binocular vision, but pretty useful for a dumb-fired weapon shot through a mono-telescope...

I did see a rather large lady in what looked to be a battleship blitter cammo patterned dress recently, walking at speed down through the crowd in the middle of Oxford Street, to my great amusement.

Dazzle

The main purpose of dazzle camo on warships was to make them look smaller and nearer to the observer than they actually were. For this to work the camo pattern relied on long ranges and poor visibility and not on relative speed between the target and the observer.

Another "clever" idea....

May be a myth, but I've heard several versions of an equally "clever" idea story from the Sixties. Some boffin decided that dust clouds made APCs much harder to hit with RPGs, so he talked the US Army into trying M113s with big leaf-blowers on the front. The idea was the blowers would blow a cloud of dust in front of and to the sides of the APC, and stop any Johnny Foreigner types getting an accurate bead on the vehicle. The story goes that it wasn't until presented to the more practical Brits/Australians/Israellis that it was pointed out the dust also made it impossible for the driver to see where he was going too!

Blowing smoke @ Bryant

I suspect that is an urban legend, but there are so many types of these stories it is hard to tell.

Certainly everyone uses smoke launchers and have done for a long time. Arm the drivers and gunners with thermal cameras and they can see fine, unlike the cannon fodder trying to use rocket launchers! I suspect that dust could also interfere with this kit, thus making smoke much more practical on several levels.

Of course, many anti tank rocket launchers now have thermal sights and so tank/APC designers now have to try and reduce the thermal signature of those monsters. I believe even land rovers have smoke launchers, but there are only so many times you can use them and in Afghanistan that probably means you can't drive anywhere until the smoke clears.

Using dazzle camo is sort of a nice idea in theory, but as 90% (or whatever the real statistic is) of vehicles are taken out by IEDs not RPGs, rather pointless. Also would not work against an RPG fired from the front or rear and from what I hear, some of those Taliban RPGers are pretty damn good shots. Putting your faith in a theory that the paint might make them miss more is not a good idea! Better armour that does not add crippling weight is the answer for RPGs and quite a few exist already, hence those grills on the side of trucks etc.

RE: Blowing smoke @ Bryant

As I recall, the argument for the dust-blowers was that it could produce a continuous dustcloud without the need to first spot a threat, whereas smoke grenade launchers only work the once for a short time, and then only after the threat has been spotted and the launchers triggered. If a tank had already used its smoke it was unable to hide until the launchers (all external) had been reloaded - not likely in a firefight. I think you'll also find that the smoke grenades used to produce the "instant" smokescreen on modern armoured vehicles also include particles to generate IR "fog", so your own thermal and IR kit is also blinded by them. Whether the dustcloud experiment story is true or military urban folklore is debateable, but I've heard it several times from different sources so I suggest there must be an element of truth in it.

Left out the 'no shit'

Didn't the Japanese try this with their factories?

I saw a picture somewhere of a Japanese factory painted in a rather fetching orange and pink dazzle pattern. I guess the planes are going quite fast, but then they didn't have to use the factory as teh aiming point - so I'm not sure if it worked, or was even in widespread use.

Take a Page From History...

Cut out pages of the Quran and paste them all over your vehicle, ala the Battle of Siffin on 10th Safar, 36...or 28 July 657 for you infidels. Voila, no more RPG threat. 'Course, if that fails, see icon, attached.

Here is an idea

Mount a rotating multi beam strobed search light on the vehicle so that as the vehicle passes Johnny Taliban, the strobe and high intensity light, causes him to misjudge the vehicles position or blinds him momentarily. A bit like the Matilda "canal defence system" but with a strobe.

RE: Take a Page From History...

The Taleban gunners are likley to be far too far away to be able to identify the pages as those from the Koran. A large slice of the Taleban are also illiterate, so they wouldn't be able to tell what the pages were even if they did get close enough. You could announce that you are pasting bits of the Koran all over your vehicles, but that would upset the locals, leading to less support from them and probably the usual Muslim riots Worldwide.

If we can fly Reaper drones over Afghanistan from the other side of the World, I don't see why we can't make drone APCs to scout out routes and act as sacrificial lambs to IEDs. RPGs I see as much less of a problem - spaced and reactive armour has been around for years and will stop most of the hollow-charge weapons the Taleban are likely to have, so why bother with silly paint schemes?

Daily Mail???

I'm a scientist me

Seems like another case of arts academics pretending there is some hint of science about their work.

Although we shouldn't necessarily discount the theory of camouflage patterns causing difficulties in tracking a target simply because this study was complete and utter bull, there is a possibility that it could maybe be useful, but I agree that it's better to not be seen at all, that said how easily can you hide a land rover in a big open desert? It's still got black tires, shiny windows, engine noise, tire noise and probably a plume of dust behind it, even at speeds below 90 kph.

I'm sure our feeble defence budget could be better spent than researching this crap (i.e. on more proven armour).

Another fine article from LP.

bootnote: mfw El Reg is using crappy new icons. You even got the trollface wrong, it's only trollface if it's facing right, facing left is coolguy and "D'oh"? You best be trollin.

Re: I'M A SCIENTIST ME

If you're a neuroscientist and you want to understand the brain, one of the high difficulty-to-scientific value areas of study is the visual system because:-

1. The area is accessible to imaging, probes etc. on most animals as its located at the back of the head

2. The input is controllable (shine patterns on the eye)

3. Vision is the humans primary sense

4. Grey matter is structurally similar across brain regions (so insights in the visual system, to some extent, may carry to other areas like speech, executive control etc.)

Thus visual illusions found by psychophysicists are valuable effects that can be studied by in vivo experimentalists to find neural correlates between high level perception (it looks nearer) and low level neural representations.

I'll not defend some of the wacky practical implications, but the data generated in the experiment is not art.

title

butthurt psychologist detected.

From what's said in the article it doesn't seem any imaging was done, I agree that neuroscience, especially imaging, is very interesting and a valid area of study.

But "psychophysicists" sounds like a title designed to give the impression that the field is something other than what it is, I don't think it's really physics and I don't think this study in particular is particularly useful nor do I think it adds anything to scientific knowledge, I'm sure this pattern tracking stuff has already been done, although I could be wrong. Anyway I know that any study that feels the need to justify its self with ridiculous assumptions as to practical implications is probably a load of bullshit.

If they have money to waste :)

Well if they have money to waste they should paper the sides with colour e-ink paper displaying a video feed of whats on the other side of the landrover, a sort of really rubbish predator invisibility :)

Anybody who has actually been in a tank knows

Re: Anybody who has actually been in a tank knows

And anybody who has basic infantry training knows that tanks will roll straight over suitably constructed foxholes, leaving the shaken but unharmed infantryman behind the tank - and able to twat it with a shaped charge or satchel bomb (or even a Molotov cocktail in the vents if you're a Finn).

Don't worry, Lewis...

@Dave 62

No, Dave 62, I do robotics. In my field some people use psychological data generated in manipulation tasks to understand the functional block diagram of how humans recompute trajectories in uncertain situations (in order to make our robots manipulate better).

I am defending an area of research that I am not personally involved in, but that I see has genuine scientific value in other areas.

I find people like you that leap to the rubbishing of other peoples work generally ignorant. I don't think you have a broad enough range of knowledge in enough areas to make that call rationally.

RE: The British Army tried this in Berlin in the 80's

Thanks, I'd seen a similar pic but thought it was a one-off experiment, I didn't know it had been as widespread. Interesting theory on how to hide a Chieftain tank, I wonder if it worked from the air as a defence against Hinds?

camo

Dazzle also confuses the aimer

Sure anyone can see the vehicle, but it takes a few seconds to actually process it and figure out what the vehicle extents are and how it is moving and generally disrupts decision making.

In a fire fight those few seconds can mean the difference between you getting your shot in before the other guy.

I did some (not very scientific) experiments on the impact of dazzle in sports. I put some Ouchi patterns (google will find) on a hockey goalkeeper and it really impacted badly on the strikers' ability to score goals.

Maybe not so implausible after all

Well, what if you move the pattern at a different speed than the tank? Say, the pattern is painted on a cloth stretched between two rollers at each end of the tank? Or you put some lights (or those flipping, coloured disks on bus displays) at regular intervals along the side and then scroll a pattern along the side?

Low threat

RPG's aren't a particularly large threat to armoured vehicles. The Slat armour and "foam" are both designed to combat the threat of an RPG weapon. A much larger threat, is command detonated roadside bombs, which rely on the trigger man spotting the vehicle, in relation to the weapon, and how long it takes to denote.

Pimp my horse

Zebras are not stripey just to look cool. You can prove anything with theoretical calculations, but evolution suggests that there probably is some merit in this camo scheme, even for small relatively slow moving targets. Admittedly this sort of scheme works best in heards and not for lone individuals, but that is just a tactical nuance for the army to take into consideration.

NYPD crime data from 1970s shows that pimps wearing leopard-skin overcoats and rolling in rides with zebra-hide seats were less likely to get whacked than other more sartorially disadvantaged playas. The data also notes that it is more difficult to apply cap to ass at night if you are wearing sunglasses, and holding your pistol sideways doesn't help either, but that is a different story.

Some letters and or numbers

Please stop...

I think you should put "abrams rpg hit" into Google Images and see the result. I'll save you the trouble: images of blackened and toasty M1s. Just because a round won't penetrate a tank's armour doesn't mean it isn't vulnerable. First image: http://defense-update.com/features/du-1-04/rpg-threat.htm

Additionally, your statement is only vaguely true if you are talking about the traditional image of a terrorist toting an RPG-7 (2nd image in link above). A terrorist toting an RPG-29 will fuck up a tank like you wouldn't believe (http://preview.tinyurl.com/3cry3wx found in Lebanon). An RPG-29 penetrated the frontal armour of a British Challenger 2 in Iraq. If you have any knowledge of tanks you'll know the frontal armour is the thickest a tank has.

Your second statement is so ludicrous as to border on delusional. A good hit on a Stryker with an RPG is an insta-kill. The armour of the Stryker was only designed to take hits by from 14.5mm HMG rounds, and not an RPG. RPG-7 armour penetration: 250mm rolled steel. Stryker armour: ~15mm.

Ah...now you might be thinking of slat and reactive armour. The last image in the link at the top is of a Stryker fitted with slat armour. Notice something? No protection from above or at wheel level. Unfortunately Iraq and Afghanistan have lots of hills or lots of buildings to fire RPGs from.

Not that either add-on armour makes any difference to some RPG-7 models and RPG-29s, whose tandem-charge warhead defeats both.

Please stop...

"....An RPG-29 penetrated the frontal armour of a British Challenger 2 in Iraq...." Not quite. The round ricocheted off the road in front of the tank and hit the thinner armour under the nose. Even then, the armour was thick enough to soak up so much of the round's power that the damage to the tank was a coin-size hole and the driver lost three toes. The tank was not "destroyed" or "disabled". After an investigation, all Challengers in the theatre were fitted with additonal counter-measures under the nose which ensured the "success" could not happen a second time. Other attacks with RPG-29s and even the latest Iranian anti-tank weapons failed to penetrate the Challengers. In combat against Shia militia in Al-Amara, Iraq, one Challemger2 is reputed to have taken 27 hits from RPGs and missiles in one engagement without any impact on its fighting ability. The only weapon the crews really worried about was the larger IEDs being fired under the vehicle against the thinner floor armour.

The Abrams pictured looked to be the victim of an IED, not an RPG, and was probably destroyed by Allied air forces to stop the vehicle's systems falling into terrorist hands. AFAIK, the US claims the only Abrams ever lost to an AT weapon were a couple of "friendly-fire" victims hit by much bigger Hellfire missiles. So far, the upgraded Abrams does not seem to have a problem with RPG-29 hits.

Maybe that's because the tandem warhead on the RPG-29 "Vampir" is designed to defeat the external reactive armour added to many MBTs in the '80s, and is largely ineffective against more modern Chobham-type laminate armour. The RPG-29 got a lot of publicity after it was claimed that they had stopped many Israeli tanks in the Lebananon in 2006 (the Merkavas used reactive armour), but an Israelli investigation showed only five Merkavas had been total losses in the Lebanon. Four of those were due to large IEDs, the fifth (a Mk3 without the latest armour) had been stopped by a Kornet E anti-tank missile. All the other occaissions where Merkavas were penetrated by Hezbollah AT weapons were put down to the latest Russian-made Kornet and Metis AT missiles, and possibly the older AT-5. Since the Lebanon battles the Israellis revised tactics and upgraded just about all their Merkava units to the better Mk4, with the result that not one Merkava was lost in the Gaza operations in 2008, despite Hamas having plenty of RPG-29s. The Israelis have since added their Trophy missile defence system to the Merkava Mk4, which should stop even the Kornet getting a hit.

Maybe the MoD should take note that the Israellis have experimented with urban and disruptuve camo on armoured vehicels and decided it had little value, going back to standard olive-khaki schemes.

Sounds like the best advice is still that they used in Armagh

As previously mentioned

The whole point of the dazzle style and variants of it - is indeed to confuse a potential enemy as to which end is which - and therefore the direction in which the target is travelling.

There are some problems associated with Dazzle on tanks and units like that since the gun makes the silhouette directional. But this is less of a problem in vehicles such as trucks and non turreted vehicles of which there are substantial numbers - in the case of those (and non turreted tank conversions) dazzle would be useful to a much greater extent.

It should also be realised that in vessels such as the Flower and River class sloops the design of the vessel was such as to ambiguous. They had straight stem and stern - a central funnel uptake and upperworks designed to be as similar as possible at both ends. This made the Dazzle camouflage on these boats much more effective.

There is another point that it seems alot of people have missed on here. The primary target ID is often by eye, the very mechanism that the Dazzle is designed to fox. However secondary guidance systems on a lot of the single person weapons is either by IR, laser painting, radar or other means, which would not be affected in any way - and would improve the possibility of a hit with a suitably equipped weapon system.

Dazzle does have a place - but only in situations where the opponents have low tech, visually guided weapons. That said, paint isn't all that expensive and in the majority of situations not all members of an infantry force will have guided weapons.

So, on balance - given that survivability in war is a result of a collection of factors - a moderately cheap paint job is worthwhile, given that it helps to some degree.

Works for motor/cyclists

Where's the usual Lewis rant?

Isn't he supposed to have told us (again) that what we really need is more Septic-made choppers so none of our troops even have to poottle about in APCs? Or that the RN can do it all by firing (a small number of) cruise-missiles from a sub?

Similar has been done on tanks before.

My granddad was in tanks in North Africa during the war. As he was in at the start, he had Matildas, which were fine for seeing off the Italians, but less than useless when it came to sterner German engineering, especially in view of the bigger guns employed why Hitler's bully buys.

The brilliant British solution was to remove his gun turret altogether and replace it with an arc light. The idea was that he could focus it in on German armour at night, blinding them for long enough for another tank to get close enough to dent the Bosch armour.

Needless to say, they were grateful when they got their next upgrade.

Sadly, he is dead now, but I used to love taking him around the Bovington tank museum.

beep beep

in an unconfirmed story that might have some loony relation, apparently U.S. special on-site 'armed' corporate consultants have suspended an order with ACME (on-line paints, track shoes, hang gliders, radio controlled rocket kits and and governmental infrastructure virtualization next-day-delivery) LLC, while in the process of transferring the intellectual property licensing of plans that describe - "painting big, black archways and round holes on walls and mountains that look like tunnels and caves, to snare Taliban forces into being lured with roadrunner drones." The rational for suspending the deal (and forfeiting the credit card deposit by default), is supposedly somewhat different from that which was applied to second-guessing the cam-tanks, in that presently ACME's subsidiary manufacturer of drone roadrunners in India (Maruti ACME), has issued a warning that the roadrunners have not been evaluated for transubstantial motion through solids, igniting debate that the drones smashing into the decoys ahead of their pursuers might open too large a window of opportunity to the would-be Taliban to suss out the ruse and just fall down laughing.